What if do-gooder zeal boosts turnout to 100 percent, drastically diminishing the average voter's knowledge of the issues in the misguided process?

What if all the folks who didn't vote -- and some who do -- took enough time to learn a few ballot-box basics?

For instance, test yourself with two more questions:

Who represents you in the S.C. Senate, S.C. House and on your town or city council?

Stumped?

Try an easier one: Who represents you in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House?

Still stumped?

If so, perhaps you, not the politicians you so arbitrarily dismiss as self-serving fools or frauds, are the primary source of governmental incompetence. You don't even know who's in the race, yet you brand each horse a loser.

At least many citizens who ignore real-life civics classes have the good sense not to vote.

Still, when fewer than 470,000 of this state's more than 2.1 million registered voters showed up for Tuesday's party primaries, that meant nearly 80 percent of them missed a rare chance. Though U.S. senators serve six-year terms, we South Carolinians have elected a new one only once in almost four decades -- two years ago when Lindsey Graham replaced Strom Thurmond.

With Fritz Hollings stepping down at the relatively young age of 82 after a mere 38 years on that job (10 years short of the late Thurmond's national record), we must elect another new senator this fall. But even the high-stakes contest for the Republican Senate nomination generated fewer than 300,000 votes -- barely more than half of the turnout for the 2000 S.C. GOP presidential primary. Low Charleston County turnout (about 15 percent compared to about 22 percent statewide) helped prevent a major surprise by local resident Thomas Ravenel, who finished less than 5,000 votes out of a runoff.

Among the competing reasons so many people didn't -- and don't -- vote: complacency, apathy, frustration, cynicism.

Some non-voters are content, assuming that things are OK now and will continue to be OK regardless of election outcomes.

Some non-voters realize that they lack the knowledge to cast a sufficiently informed ballot.

But most non-voters, and even some voters, perceive a lack of distinguishable -- and distinguished -- candidates. They echo the gripe issued by third-party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968 when he declared, "There's not a dime's worth of difference" between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Though Wallace was wrong about that (and lots of other issues), he won five states, all Southern -- but not South Carolina.

Sure, when Republicans act like Democrats and Democrats like Republicans, choosing your election-day poison can be distasteful. Many on the Right are appalled by the ongoing spectacle of runaway federal spending with the supposedly thrifty party in simultaneous charge of the White House, Senate and House. Many on the Left long ago despaired of a party that caved in on welfare reform, "tax cuts for the rich," assorted U.S. military interventions abroad and trade policies promoting economic globalization.

Don't blame the politicians. Blame the voters. The Democrats among us (or is that in us?) insist that the Nanny State take care of us from cradle to grave. The Republicans among us (or is that in us?) insist upon perpetual tax cuts that limit government's ability to pay the ever-escalating tab for those contradictory public demands.

We get the inconsistent leadership we choose, the leadership we deserve. If you don't actively choose by voting, you passively choose by not voting.

If you can't tell the Republicans from the Democrats, voting-booth alternatives exist. Didn't like Wallace? Maybe you'll like Ralph Nader. Though minor-party candidates usually lose, they can, as Wallace so defiantly put it, "Send them a message."

As for the divisive complaint that glowing assessments of a past president have been overly positive while overlooking a second-term scandal, leave such final judgments on the disbarred Bill Clinton -- and "The Great Communicator" -- to history. Worry less about elections past, more about elections present and future.

Meanwhile, ponder this instructive anecdote from the 1985 Geneva Summit in "Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency From Inside the White House," by former presidential press secretary Larry Speakes and Robert Pack:

"Reagan told the following joke which made Gorbachev laugh heartily: An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Gorbachev and says, 'In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, "I don't like the way you are running the country." ' Gorbachev replied, 'You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say, "I don't like the way Reagan is running his country." ' Gorbachev laughed."

Another celebrity from Russia, Mikhail "The Great Dancer" Baryshnikov, should get that joke all too well. In town to play the lead -- without dancing -- in the Spoleto Festival USA play "Forbidden Christmas or the Doctor and the Patient," Baryshnikov explained last week:

"One message of this piece is not to ever take freedom for granted, something United States citizens tend to forget."

That's no joke. So remember the immense value of your American right to have your say about the Bushes, Clintons, Reagans, Sanfords, Kerrys and even hard-working newspaper columnists.

Remember, too, that your say will be louder if you vote.

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